The "Middle East and Terrorism" Blog was created in order to supply information about the implication of Arab countries and Iran in terrorism all over the world. Most of the articles in the blog are the result of objective scientific research or articles written by senior journalists.

From the Ethics of the Fathers: "He [Rabbi Tarfon] used to say, it is not incumbent upon you to complete the task, but you are not exempt from undertaking it."

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Friday, May 15, 2015

Protestors chanted slogans condemning the Palestinians who hold meetings with Israelis as traitors.

The "anti-normalization" and Boycotts, Divestment and Sanctions
(BDS) movements are, in fact, anti-Palestinian, anti-Israel and
anti-peace campaigns that cause more damage to the people they claim
they are trying to help. They have much in common with Hamas and other
terror groups working to destroy any chance of peace between Israel and
the Palestinians.

Palestinians need to distance themselves from those who seek to
impose their will on them through intimidation and terror. Boycotting
Israelis, especially those Israelis who support Palestinians, is not in
the Palestinians' interest.

Palestinian activists on May 11 broke up
a conference in east Jerusalem where Israelis and Palestinians met to
discuss the two-state solution. The activists belong to the
"anti-normalization" campaign, which aims to thwart meetings between
Israelis and Palestinians.

The conference at the Ambassador Hotel was organized by the Israel
Palestine Center for Research and Information (IPCRI), a
non-governmental organization (NGO) think tank based in Jerusalem. It
has been working towards a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict.

Entitled, "Is The Two-State Solution Still Relevant?," the conference
was supposed to include a discussion on the issue from the perspectives
of the Palestinian side and the Israeli Left.

Organizers said the event was made possible by the support of the Government of the Netherlands.

The Israeli side was represented by Dr. Alon Liel, former
Director-General of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs and
ambassador to South Africa. The identity of the Palestinian
representative was not announced before the discussion, apparently to
avoid pressure from the "anti-normalization" activists.

Liel is an outspoken critic of Israeli policies toward the Palestinians. Two years ago, he told The Times of Israel
that he supports cultural boycotts of Israel, and that he himself
started boycotting goods produced in the settlements to protest the lack
of progress in the peace negotiations.

But all this did not stop the "anti-normalization" activists from
disrupting his speech and forcing him to abandon the podium at the
Ambassador Hotel.

Shortly after the discussion began, scores of Palestinian activists,
many of whom are affiliated with Palestinian Authority (PA) President
Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction, stormed the conference room and chanted
slogans denouncing "normalization with Israel."

The protesters also chanted slogans condemning the Palestinians who
hold meetings with Israelis as traitors. In addition, they chanted,
"Jerusalem is Arab!" and "Palestine is free!"

One of the protesters announced that he and his friends came to
express their opposition to "normalization meetings" between Israelis
and Palestinians. Another protester explained: "This is not the first
time that such meetings take place in Jerusalem and the West Bank. This
phenomenon has to stop."

That some of the activists are affiliated with Fatah did not stop
them from condemning the PA leadership for maintaining security
coordination with Israel in the West Bank.

Hamas, which does not recognize Israel's right to exist and is
opposed to any meetings with the "Zionist entity," was quick to praise
the activists who broke up the meeting in east Jerusalem.

"The foiling of the normalization conference in occupied Jerusalem is
a sign of the great awareness of the Palestinian youths and the
determination of our people to deal with the occupation as an enemy that
should be fought against and not accepted," commented Hamas spokesman Hussam Badran. "We salute the free youths who carried out this national act."

Hamas's response shows that the activists who stormed the conference
hall are actually serving the interests of the Islamist movement, which
feels emboldened by such attacks. By failing to condemn the attack
against Israeli and Palestinian peace activists, the PA and Fatah
leadership are also promoting Hamas's agenda and ideology.

This was not the first time that "anti-normalization" activists
targeted Israelis and Palestinians who try to get together to talk
peace. In recent years, the activists disrupted and broke up a number of
meetings in east Jerusalem and the West Bank on the pretext that they
were designed to promote normalization with Israel.

Last year, another Israeli-Palestinian conference held in the same hotel was called off after anti-Israel activists stormed the hall and started shouting, forcing participants to flee.

A few weeks later, "anti-normalization" activists attacked two events in Ramallah. The first was a performance by an Indian dance troupe.
The protesters accused the Indian Classical Dance Performance, Kathak,
of appearing before members of the Indian community in Tel Aviv, arguing
that this was a form of normalization with Israel. PA security forces
used force to disperse and arrest some of the activists.

The activists were arrested because they had embarrassed the PA,
which hosted the Indian dancers, not because of the "anti-normalization"
campaign.

Another event targeted
by the "anti-normalization" activists took place at City Inn Hotel in
Ramallah, where Israelis and Palestinians met under the banner "People
Make Peace." The event was organized by the organization Minds of Peace,
founded in 2009 by an Israeli peace activist, Sapir Handelman. The
Israeli participants were rushed to Palestinian police vehicles that
drove them to the nearest Israel Defense Forces checkpoint.

The Palestinian "anti-normalization" campaign is part of the
anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement that is
especially active in the US, Canada, Australia, Britain, South Africa
and other Western countries. Its first objective is to intimidate and
threaten Palestinians and Israelis who seek peace and who believe in the
two-state solution. Its second objective is to delegitimize and isolate
Israel in the international community. In this regard, both groups have
much in common with Hamas and other terror groups that are working to
destroy any chance of peace between Israel and the Palestinians.

Palestinians need to distance themselves from those who seek to
impose their will on them through intimidation and terror. Boycotting
Israelis, especially those who support the Palestinians, is not a
Palestinian interest. The "anti-normalization" and BDS movements are, in
fact, anti-Palestinian, anti-Israel and anti-peace campaigns that only
cause more damage and suffering to the people they claim they are trying
to help.

Earlier this year, Czech Republic thwarted attempted
Iranian purchase of large shipment of sensitive technology usable for
nuclear enrichment after false documents raised suspicions • Incident
adds to Western concerns about whether Iran can be trusted.

The Czech Republic blocked an attempted
purchase by Iran this year of a large shipment of sensitive technology
usable for nuclear enrichment after false documentation raised
suspicions, U.N. experts and Western sources said.

The incident could add to Western concerns
about whether Iran can be trusted to adhere to a nuclear deal being
negotiated with world powers under which it would curb sensitive nuclear
work in exchange for sanctions relief.

The negotiators are trying to reach a deal by
the end of June after hammering out a preliminary agreement on April 2,
with Iran committing to reduce the number of centrifuges it operates and
agreeing to other long-term nuclear limitations.

Some details of the attempted purchase were
described in the latest annual report of an expert panel for the United
Nations Security Council's Iran sanctions committee, which has been seen
by Reuters.

The panel said that in January Iran attempted
to buy compressors -- which have nuclear and non-nuclear applications --
made by the U.S.-owned company Howden CKD Compressors.

A Czech state official and a Western diplomat
familiar with the case confirmed to Reuters that Iran had attempted to
buy the shipment from Howden CKD in the Czech Republic, and that Czech
authorities had acted to block the deal.

It was not clear if any intermediaries were involved in the attempt to acquire the machinery.

There was no suggestion that Howden CKD itself
was involved in any wrongdoing. Officials at Prague-based Howden
declined to comment on the attempted purchase.

The U.N. panel, which monitors compliance with
the U.N. sanctions regime, said there had been a "false end user"
stated for the order.

"The procurer and transport company involved
in the deal had provided false documentation in order to hide the
origins, movement and destination of the consignment with the intention
of bypassing export controls and sanctions," it added.

The report offered no further details about
the attempted transaction. Iran's U.N. mission did not respond to a
query about the report.

The Czech state official said the party
seeking the compressors had claimed the machinery was needed for a
compressor station, such as the kind used to transport natural gas from
one relay station to another.

The official declined to say exactly how the
transaction was stopped, provide specifications of the compressors or
confirm the intended purchaser. However, he made clear it was the Czech
authorities who halted the deal

The official, who spoke on condition of
anonymity, said the total value of the contract would have been about
1.5 billion Czech koruna ($61 million).

This was a huge amount for the company
concerned, the previously named CKD Kompresory, a leading supplier of
multi-stage centrifugal compressors to the oil and gas, petrochemical
and other industries.

The firm was acquired by Colfax Corp. of the
United States in 2013 for $69.4 million. A spokesman for Colfax declined
to comment.

The United States and its Western allies say
Iran continues to try to skirt international sanctions on its atomic and
missile programs even while negotiating the nuclear deal.

The U.N. panel of experts also noted in its
report that Britain informed it of an active Iranian nuclear procurement
network linked to blacklisted firms.

While compressors have non-nuclear
applications in the oil and gas industry, they also have nuclear uses,
including in centrifuge cascades. Centrifuges purify uranium gas fed
into them for use as fuel in nuclear reactors or weapons, if purified to
levels of around 90% of the fissile isotope uranium-235.

"Such compressors can be used to extract
enriched uranium directly from the cascades," Olli Heinonen, former
deputy director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency and a
nuclear expert currently at Harvard University, told Reuters.

"In particular, they are useful when working
with higher enrichment such as 20% enriched uranium," he said, adding
that precise specifications of the compressors in question would be
necessary to make a definitive assessment.

Iran has frozen production of 20% enriched
uranium, a move that Western officials cite as one of the most important
curbs on Iranian nuclear activities under an interim agreement in 2013.

Iran rejects allegations by Western powers and
their allies that it is seeking the capability to produce atomic
weapons and says its nuclear program is for peaceful purposes.

The IAEA and the United States have said repeatedly that Iran has adhered to the terms of the 2013 interim deal.

Influential Imam says western governments making a fatal mistake in embracing groups like the Muslim Brotherhood to combat ISIS.

Imam Yahya Pallavicini

Ari Soffer

Among the hundreds of participants at the 5th Global Forum for
Combating Anti-Semitism in Jerusalem on Wednesday, Imam Yahya
Pallavicini cut an unlikely figure.

A scholarly and softly-spoken individual, Pallavicini is an
influential leader in the Italian Muslim community. Apart from
heading the Al-Wahid Mosque in Milan, he is Vice President of the
Islamic Religious Community of Italy (known by its Italian
acronym, COREIS), and serves as an adviser on Islamic Affairs to the
Italian interior ministry.

Pallavicini is also a longtime counter-extremism activist, who has
been battling the rise of Islamism within his own and the wider European
Muslim community for many years. Given the prime role played by Muslim
extremism in the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe, his participation in
the Forum provided an important perspective on how moderate Muslim
scholars can be mobilized to undercut the narrative of "political
Islam" that is fueling the hate.

It is a mark of recognition of his work that Pallavicini was invited
personally by the foreign ministry to take part in the biennial
conference.

Speaking to Arutz Sheva, he explained how in his view the
rise of Islamism is being aided by the "narrow-mindedness" of many
western leaders, who have naively sought to empower "soft" Islamist
groups - such as the Muslim Brotherhood - in an attempt to weaken the
draw of jihadist groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda.

It's an approach which has long been criticized by counter-extremist
groups throughout the west, who challenge that since 9/11 western
governments have actually strengthened the hold of extremists over
Muslim communities by assuming that if it's not Al Qaeda (or ISIS), it's
"moderate." In fact, in doing so they have simply helped construct an
efficient conveyor belt to terrorism, giving legitimacy and even funding
to nonviolent extremist groups to brainwash a new generation of
European Muslims, an increasing number of whom then move on to commit
acts of terrorism and other forms of violence, including anti-Semitism.

That poses a threat not only to European Jews, but to European civilization as a whole, Pallavicini warned.

"The purpose of being here is to strengthen our cooperation, because
we are both challenged by this threat," he explained. "There is no
excuse for any kind of narrative that is just an alibi for violent
extremism."

"If anti-Semitism increases this is something which threatens to destroy the basis of civilization and religion at every level."

But his opposition to anti-Semitism also comes from a recognition and
appreciation of the theological and historical contribution played by
Jews to both Muslim and European thought and civilization.

"As a Muslim theologian I believe that Judaism and the history and
theology and doctrine of the Jews is part of my roots, part of my
European citizenship, is part of my spiritual beliefs," he said.

Pallavicini called on European leaders to recognize the threat before it's too late.

"Radical Islam - or political Islam - is increasing prejudice and
discrimination against Jews. But there is also a narrow-minded
misinterpretation of European politicians where, in order to face the
threat of ISIS for example, they legitimate the discourse of other
radical groups," he said.

"They say: let's give legitimacy to the Muslim Brotherhood, or other political Islamic ideologies - which is wrong."

He urged politicians to "avoid any kind of apologism" towards
Islamism in any form, insisting that emboldening such an aggressive and
anti-western movement "goes against the basics of civilization and
dialogue."

But he also said moderate Muslims need to do more to make their voices heard.

"On the other side, moderate Islam has a problem - it is too
'moderate'!" Pallavicini lamented. "They are not outspoken enough to
defend against and prevent Islamism."

One of the main reasons for this is not necessarily a lack of will
(many more moderate Muslims equally fear and resent the dominance of
extremists within their communities), but to a large degree stems from
"a lack of skills" to effectively compete with the well-organized and
well-funded Islamist movements.

To combat that problem, Pallavicini says young, educated Muslim
leaders must step up to the plate to challenge the often unqualified but
persuasive Islamist ideologues.

"We need authentic Muslim leaders, who know the roots of their own
doctrine but also know how to implement that doctrine. Theologians
with practical skills to engage with Jews and Christians to create a
counter-narrative," he said.

It's a quest which takes up much of his time in Italy, where in his
role as imam of Al-Wahid Mosque he is involved in training new Italian
clerics.

"We need to train a new generation of leaders, preachers, believers
from Muslim backgrounds and try to develop a consciousness of, as well
as the skills to implement, an effective counter-narrative," he stated.

Furthermore, he said a "network" of moderate Muslims was required
to challenge the vast network of Islamist groups which currently exist
throughout Europe.

He also called on Jews and Christians, as well as Muslims, to move
away from purely abstract "interfaith dialogue," and focus as much or
more so on practical strategies to combat extremism, including "creative
programs which help prevent students being brainwashed by ideological
extremism."

Interfaith activities are often utilized by Islamist groups to get
the best of both worlds: engaging in benign, meaningless talks with
other faith groups in exchange for government funds and legitimacy in
the name of "interfaith activities," while simultaneously continuing to
peddle their messages of hate within their own communities.

In that regard, non-Muslim community leaders have a responsibility as
well to insist on only sharing platforms with true moderates, he
cautioned.

"The only way to engage in positive and wise policies is to give and
share platforms with authentic religious leaders, and not those who are
using religion for their own personal or political legitimacy."

Smith [the proposed instructor], who labels Zionism as “beyond redeemable” and “intrinsically
irredeemable from the start,” subscribes to every single modern day
calumny against the Jewish State.

Imagine
for a moment that a university decides to offer a new course called
“Perspectives on the American Civil Rights Movement.” Imagine further
that the professor slated to teach the course lacks any degree
applicable to the subject, never visited any of the historical sites
associated with the subject and never published anything noteworthy on
the subject that would indicate a particular expertise. Instead, the
professor maintains a degree in biology and his writings on the course
subject matter are limited to interactive “talkback” commentary and a
few op-eds in fringe or obscure online blogs. Imagine further that this
professor is highly critical and even hateful of the civil rights
movement and his opinions on the subject reflect a visceral animosity
toward anything or anyone who attempted to advance the cause of civil
rights in America. Now substitute the word “Zionism” for “American Civil
Rights Movement” and this ridiculous and unimaginable charade instantly
turns into an ugly reality at the University of Missouri.

In the fall of 2015, students at the University of Missouri will be offered
a one credit “honors tutorial” called “Perspectives on Zionism.” George
P. Smith – more on this character later – is slated to be the course
lecturer. According to its description, the course will be limited to
“the history of Zionism from the turn of the 20th century to the present
day.” Of course, a true understanding of Zionism – the Jewish
expression of the return of the Jewish people to their homeland and the
resumption of Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel – and its roots
requires an examination of the millennia-old Jewish cultural, spiritual,
historical, religious and geographical nexus to the Land of Israel.
Smith on the other hand, would have his students believe that the
Zionist movement emerged from a vacuum and is merely a modern-day
phenomenon that resulted in the displacement of the area’s “true
indigenous inhabitants.”

Smith oddly describes himself as a “Jew-in-law,” because as he puts
it, “my wife is Jewish, our kids are both bar-mitzvahed (sic), and we’re
active in the congregation though not religious.” He’s also been known
to describe himself as a “Nakba Jew-in-law,” borrowing the phrase
that Arabs routinely employ to describe the “catastrophe” that befell
the “Palestinian” Arabs following Israel’s rebirth and military victory
in 1948.

Smith, who labels Zionism as “beyond redeemable” and “intrinsically
irredeemable from the start,” subscribes to every single modern day
calumny against the Jewish State. He is a supporter of the anti-Semitic
“Boycott Divestment Sanctions” (BDS) movement. He has on multiple
occasions referred to Israel as an “Apartheid state” despite the fact
that Israel, unlike any other nation in the Mideast, maintains an
electoral system that grants all of its citizens, irrespective of gender
or ethnicity, the right to vote.

Smith is perhaps also ignorant of the fact that one of Israel’s past
presidents (on an acting basis) was a Druze Arab. Moreover, it was an
Israeli Arab who, while sitting on a 3-member judicial panel on Israel’s
highest court, found Israel’s disgraced president, Moshe Katzav, guilty
of misconduct. It would have been unthinkable for black judge to have
been appointed to the top judicial court in Apartheid-era South Africa,
let alone one with the power to sentence South Africa’s president to a
lengthy prison term. But a hate-driven, myopic partisan like Smith will
not allow facts to alter his skewed narrative.

At a recent event featuring an IDF soldier and his personal
accounts and observations, Smith, sitting in the front row, repeatedly
interrupted the speaker hurling groundless accusations. He accused
Israel of committing “ethnic cleansing” and of provoking last summer’s
Gaza war using the kidnapping-murder of three Israeli teens as the
necessary pretext. Absent from Smith’s account are the rockets and
terror tunnels employed by Hamas to inflict mass civilian casualties.
Smith routinely employs narratives that omit relevant facts necessary
for context and proper understanding of the conflict and that by itself
renders him dishonest and unsuitable to lecture on the subject of
Zionism or related fields.

If Smith had a shred of honesty in him, he would rename the course, “Perspective on
Zionism,” in singular tense because he is clearly uninterested in
allowing the expression of any narrative favorable to Zionism to filter
into the classroom. His repeated attacks against Israel – where he
subjects Israel to double standards, demonizes the Jewish State and
denies the fundamental right of Israel to exist as a sovereign Jewish
nation – places him squarely within the parameters of Natan Sharansky’s 3-D paradigm for
determining anti-Semitism. Smith’s self-proclaimed title of
“Jew-in-law,” which he utilizes as a fig leaf to spew the vilest
anti-Semitic canards, fails to insulate him from this disparaging
reality.

It is no secret that anti-Semitism on college campuses, spearheaded
by the student hate group, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP)
continues to surge. More disconcerting however, is the emergence of an
unholy alliance between college officials and the SJP. The instant case
involving Smith’s hate course at the University of Missouri represents
but one example of many.

At Brooklyn College, the political science department co-sponsored an
event with the SJP that featured BDS activist and notorious
anti-Semite, Omar Barghouti. Four Jewish students were tossed from
the event under the false pretense of causing a disruption. The
forcible removal of the students occurred in full view of senior college
officials including Milga Morales, Vice President for Student Affairs. A
Daily News reporter who was wearing a Yarmulke was also removed from the event. A subsequent investigation by outside counsel concluded that the Jewish students had not caused any disruption and were removed without just cause.

At Northeastern University, economics professor Shahid Alam told
his students to be proud of being called “anti-Semites.” He then spoke
approvingly of how the student body has turned against Israel over the
years and that those students who are still supportive of Israel are
afraid to speak their minds. Like all good fascists, Alam is supportive
of free speech when that speech is consistent with his hateful narrative
but gives the nod of approval to intimidation tactics when confronted
with challenge.

At San Francisco State University, Rabab Ibrahim Abdulhadi,
an Associate Professor of “Ethnic Studies/Race and Resistance Studies”
used university and taxpayer funds to finance an overseas trip to meet
with terrorists and leaders of xenophobic Muslim supremacist groups. In
addition, there was strong evidence suggesting that Abdulhadi misled
university officials regarding the purpose of her excursion but there
were no ramifications for her malfeasance. In essence, SFSU’s silence
was a form of acquiescence to her collaborative efforts with known
terrorists and incongruous use of taxpayer funds.

At UC Riverside, a course is being offered on “Israeli Apartheid.”
The course will be taught by student leader of SJP. The course syllabus
includes material that rejects the legitimacy of the State of Israel.
Protests by students and leading Jewish groups that the course is
anti-Semitic and violates the school’s own prohibition against political
indoctrination in the classroom have made no impact on administration
officials, who insist that the course meets requisite academic
standards.

And at Connecticut College, a distinguished professor of philosophy, Andrew Pessin, became the victim of an intellectual pogrom after Lamiya Khandaker,
a former student and SJP leader initiated a hate campaign based on
spurious allegations involving the convoluted misreading of a single
7-month old Facebook post. Without analyzing the facts and acting with
extreme haste that bordered on gross negligence, administrated officials
and faculty sided with khandaker thus further tarnishing Professor
Pessin’s good name and scheduled events featuring virulently anti-Israel
films and speakers that included terrorist supporters. Khandaker, who
chairs the college’s Diversity & Equity panel, later came under
scrutiny herself when it was revealed that she posted offensive
comments with anti-Semitic overtones on Facebook.

The University of Missouri’s collaboration with an academic, who
openly seeks Israel’s destruction and wishes to politically indoctrinate
his students with poison, represents the latest outrage. I wrote to MU
Chancellor, R. Bowen Loftin, seeking clarification on the course, its
anti-Semitic and anti-Israel overtones and Smith’s qualifications for
teaching such a subject given his abject lack of academic credentials in
Mideast studies or related fields. I have yet to receive a response and
doubt one will ever be forthcoming.Ari Lieberman is an attorney and former prosecutor who has authored numerous articles
and publications on matters concerning the Middle East and is
considered an authority on geo-political and military developments
affecting the region.Source: http://www.frontpagemag.com/2015/ari-lieberman/israel-hating-biology-prof-to-teach-course-on-zionism/ Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.

As
public spending increased and public sector pension debt mushroomed,
these and other city governments were unable to keep up with public
pension plan expenses. One fix they attempted was to borrow money from
investors by issuing municipal bonds. But these bonds only created more
debt.

Since
2009 Barack Obama and his Party have created eight trillion dollars of
public debt. What most Americans and investors are not aware of is that
another eight trillion of government debt was created over the past
forty years, mostly by Democrats. This is the accumulated unfunded
public pension and municipal bond debt. And unlike the national debt,
which is easily found and exists on government books, this second amount
of debt is not widely known. What is more unsettling is how this debt
was created and how it impacts all Americans.

Its
origin has been revealed through the bankruptcy court hearings of
Stockton, California; Detroit, Michigan; and the financial situation of
Chicago, IL.

As
public spending increased and public sector pension debt mushroomed,
these and other city governments were unable to keep up with public
pension plan expenses. One fix they attempted was to borrow money from
investors by issuing municipal bonds. But these bonds only created more
debt.

Say
a muni bond is purchased for ten thousand dollars. The buyer of the
bond usually receives an interest payment from the issuer twice a year.
If the bond is a ten-year bond, then after ten years the buyer gets
paid back the entire ten thousand dollar price at termination. The
interest payments made twenty times during those ten years are the
interest income.

But
Chicago, Stockton and Detroit came to the point where they could no
longer afford to make those biannual bond and termination payments. To
get through this financial squeeze cities began using financial engineering to remake debt, also issuing muni bonds and other instruments.

As
larger cities filed for bankruptcy, the Securities and Exchange
Commission set out to review how muni bonds are regulated. Their 2012
report1 is not only very unsettling but proves government-sponsored securities fraud.

Here’s
how the SEC set up this national securities fraud scheme. Ordinarily,
bond investors need to have valid information from the issuer regarding
three topics: 1) revenue flow, 2) financial liabilities, and 3) market
value of assets. It’s important to note while SEC regulations require
private sector corporate bond issuers to accurately disclose this
information, the SEC intentionally wrote different disclosure regulations regarding muni bonds.

For
example, muni bond revenue flow disclosures allowed assumptions of an
8% return on investments, which haven’t been seen in reality in many
years. And future revenue flows are distorted through fuzzy revenue
flow reporting methods. The GASB through rule 65 is now recommending
changes to how future revenues2 are reported. The biggest factor was that unfunded pension liabilities which now total over $4.6 trillion3 did not have to be reported.

“In
the private sector the SEC would quickly bring fraud charges against a
corporate issuer and its officers for playing such numbers games. And,
we would also pursue and punish the so-called fiduciaries who recklessly
seek yield to meet unrealistic accounting expectations.”

Commissioner Gallagher did not explain why the SEC treated the public sector differently.

While
there does not seem to be a data set that lists the most fraudulent
muni bonds, it is true to say they were all issued under the same
regulations, and all the cities so far filing for bankruptcy have issued
muni bonds under these regulations.

Recent SEC efforts to change these practices have met with pushback and been called “controversial.”

So muni bond buyers, 72% of whom are retail (individuals), did not, and still do not, know what they are getting into.

Even
though muni bonds were sold through fraud, both bankruptcy court
Federal Judges, Judge Klein in Stockton, CA and Judge Rhodes in Detroit,
ruled that some muni bond investors would lose up to 90% of their
original investments. Instead of getting 100% of their original
investment back at termination, the muni bondholders are only getting
10% back. The public sector pensions were given preference and allowed
to keep virtually all of their benefits.5

If
an American investor heard of a nation that was issuing muni bonds with
shady disclosure rules and stole 90% of investors’ principal they would
think the nation was some Third World banana republic. But these are
U.S. cities under Democrats.

Since 2003, Illinois has allowed a number of financial engineering
tactics to be practiced with these muni bonds. Chicago’s use of these
tactics such as interest rate swaps are only now being revealed through
forensic financial analyses as written by Culpepper.

These
financial shenanigans have one thing in common with the 2008 mortgage
meltdown: they were brought about because government regulators didn’t
follow private sector rules. And while the 2008 meltdown revealed how
the federal government changed the mortgage rules, the muni bond fraud reveals that the SEC always had a different set of rules for muni bond issuers.

Remarkably,
the SEC still has not significantly changed the rules. The Dodd-Frank
Bill still did not correct the liability disclosure issue, and only
recommended that a “commission” possibly look at the topic.

U.S. unfunded pension plan and muni bond debt now totals over $8.3 trillion dollars. This is equal to the entire U.S. national debt in 2006. This includes one million muni bonds valued at $3.76 trillion
and $4.6 trillion of unfunded public pension debt. This is larger than
the $5.25 trillion of subprime home purchase and refinance originations
enabled from by the GSE Act from 1997 to 2007 which lead up to the 2008
mortgage meltdown.7 By comparison, the combined GDPs of Germany and Japan, the third and fourth largest economies on earth, totaled $8.6 trillion in 2014.

The
SEC has hired only six people to chase down violators. These six have
gone after New Jersey and San Diego but ignored Chicago, which has the
most unfunded pension and bond debt. Illinois was charged with securities fraud in 2013 but no one was punished.

The
reason the unfunded pension fund liabilities should be added to the
muni bond debt is that they are financially linked. Muni bonds enable
and support public pension debt because muni bonds are both secured
through and paid for by property taxes. Every week Chicago and the state
of Illinois add tens of millions more of pension debt which creates a
demand for more muni bonds and higher property taxes. In Chicago
property taxes only go to pay for public pensions and bond debt. They
do not go for city services, in spite of what politicians say.

In fact each household in Chicago now “owes” the city and state $88,000
for their unfunded public pension debts. In effect the city and state
are using every household as collateral to finance their retirement fund
borrowing -- without their knowledge or permission.

The Federal government used the SEC to intentionally reject private sector bond regulations in order to institutionalize bureaucratic growth, underwrite patronage job pensions and redistribute debt to future taxpayers.

In a TV interview,
Yazidi artist Ammar Salim talks about his paintings, in which he portrays the
tragedies suffered by the Yazidis at the hands of ISIS. Despite death threats,
"Ammar stresses that he will continue to paint in order to make the voice
of the Yazidis heard and to keep their ordeal on peoples' minds,"
according to the report, which aired on Sky News Arabia on April 26, 2015.

Reporter: "Since ISIS gained control of wide
swathes of Iraq, members of the Yazidi minority are among the victims of this
organization. Yazidis have been killed, captured, wounded, and forced to become
refugees. This is the only thing said about the Yazidis in the international
media. Ammar Salim is a Yazidi artist, trying to break this stereotypical view
of the Yazidis by means of art.

"Ammar works diligently in his small apartment, which he converted into a
studio after fleeing from his home in Bashiqa. Ammar has entered a phase of
intensive work, as can be seen by the paintings on the walls of this small room
in the city of Duhok, in Kurdistan, northern Iraq. He says that he was inspired
by the atrocities perpetrated by the Islamic State against the Yazidis."

Ammar Salim: "[My paintings] speak of the annihilation
of the Yazidis, of the justice. Perhaps in a little while, I will paint the
[Camp] Speicher massacre. Whatever ISIS does, I will oppose them. I document
everything I see in my paintings."

Reporter: "Despite all the tragedies that the Yazidis have
suffered, Ammar's art is not limited to painting [the troubles] of his own
sect. Ammar, who suffers from a lack of financial resources, tries to paint
with cheap materials, if he can get his hands on them. That is not the only
thing he suffers from. Ammar says that he has received death threats since his
paintings have appeared on many social networks.

Ammar Salim: "After one painting, I received threats
through Facebook. They sent me a message: 'If you do not burn that painting, we
will kill you. We know where to find you.'"

Reporter: "But despite the threats, Ammar stresses that he will
continue to paint in order to make the voice of the Yazidis heard, and to keep
their ordeal on people's minds."

In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels wrote
of the “abolition of the family.” Their destructive attacks on family
and the institution of marriage were picked up by subsequent Marxists in
the many decades thereafter. Fidel Castro was one of them.

This once-unthinkable display in Cuba was no less than its eighth
annual “March Against Homophobia and Transphobia.” This one took on
extra special meaning for 20 couples who “symbolically exchanged”
wedding vows, even as same-sex marriage remains illegal in Cuba, but
obviously not for long. If this can happen under the dictatorial nose of
despots Fidel and Raul Castro, then it’s already permissible.

Gay
Cubans erupted into a celebratory parade, banging conga drums and
waving rainbow-colored banners. The special day is regularly celebrated
just after May Day, the high holy day for the communist state.

One
gleeful gay man called the celebration “a dream we never thought would
have been possible.” A lesbian participant agreed: “In the interior of
the country, you couldn’t even dream about an event like this.” She
exchanged vows with her partner, and added: “It’s a unique event and
surprising for gays who can show their faces without having to hide from
anyone.”

That’s
for sure. Castro’s Cuba once hauled off homosexuals to prisons and
nuthouses. They were considered mad, dangerous perverts who needed to be
isolated or dispatched from the island. Mere decades ago, this kind of
event would not have been tolerated. The marchers would have been
immediately handcuffed and beaten and carted to the loony bin.

The
ringleader is Mariela Castro, Fidel’s niece and daughter of current
President Raul Castro. She serves in Cuba’s non-democratic National
Assembly and heads the Cuban National Center for Sex Education. The
communist-state-“trained sexologist” is a gay-rights zealot.

Mariela
has been spearheading the gay agenda in Havana for several years, with
an intriguing measure of assistance from the United States, specifically
the Obama administration and Hillary Clinton’s State Department. She
adores President Obama and has lavishly commended his support of gay
marriage.

Mariela
even claims that her uncle, the great gay-basher, actually favors
same-sex marriage, “but he has not made it public.” She contends that he
has personally “done some advocacy work” on “sexual orientation and
gender identity.”

Really?
One could chalk up Mariela’s personal crusade for gay marriage to an
addiction to American sitcoms or social media, but what about this
remarkable conversion by her uncle? Does it make any sense?

Yes, it does. There’s a more sinister factor at work here that explains Fidel’s newfound love for the gay agenda.

We
must understand that there has been a two-century-long effort by the
far left, from communists like Marx and Engels to early socialists like
Charles Fourier, Robert Owen, Albert Brisbane, and many more radical
leftists throughout the 20th century, from Frankfurt School cultural
Marxists like Herbert Marcuse and Wilhelm Reich to ‘60s radicals like
Kate Millett and even Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn and the Weather
Underground, to fundamentally transform marriage and family -- with or
without gays. In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels wrote
of the “abolition of the family.” Their destructive attacks on family
and the institution of marriage were picked up by subsequent Marxists in
the many decades thereafter. Fidel Castro was one of them.

As
soon as Castro seized Cuba in 1959, he immediately began undermining
the family. The worst blows came from a devastating assault on religion
accompanied by a complete liberalization of divorce and abortion laws,
which in turn generated an unprecedented explosion in Cuban divorce and
abortion rates. In all, the cornerstone of Cuban society that was the
family was annihilated. For decades now, Cuba has been plagued by some
of the planet’s worst levels of divorce and abortion.

Fidel’s
sudden ideological marriage to the current gay agenda should be
interpreted within this context; likewise for communists generally. For
communists, from Cuba to (here at home) Communist Party USA and its
house organ, People’s World, today’s gay agenda has become a matter of faith. They’re unequivocally on board.

In gay marriage, communists have finally found their long-awaited tool,
their Trojan horse, to take down marriage and family. Even more
delicious to them, gay marriage offers a magnificent opportunity to
further excoriate the one enemy they have always hated most: religion.
And most stunningly perfect of all, gay marriage is accepted by the
mainstream -- by non-communists. Thus, for the first time ever,
communists have found a culturally accepted vehicle to attack family and
religion. In the past, communists never had public support for any of
their insane ideas for undermining family and marriage. Now, at long
last, they have one, and they are beside themselves in amazement and
joy. The masses are at long last with them.

For
a onetime devout atheistic communist like Fidel Castro, gay marriage is
a great blessing. For Cuba’s Marxist-Leninist tyrant, faced with a
conflict between his penchant for persecuting the family/marriage and
for persecuting gay people, the communist war on traditional morality
and faith and family easily wins out, thus dictating an embrace of gay
marriage. Communists will do whatever they need to destroy the family.
Even in Castro’s Cuba, then, gay marriage will work nicely for the
larger purpose.

Fidel
no doubt relishes the prospect of yet more children raised in yet more
Cuban homes lacking a mom or a dad. Gay marriage further perpetuates his
longtime goal of the state as mother or father.

Karl
Marx had characterized the “abolition of the family” as revolutionary,
as “the most radical rupture with traditional relations.” Fidel’s niece,
Mariela, gets it. She speaks of this new cause as “revolutionary.” It
will smash the “patriarchal family” that old Marxist-feminist
forerunners like Kate Millett and Betty Freidan and Alexandra Kollontai
had looked to demolish. As Mariela notes, gay marriage for Cuba is
“hugely important.”

It
certainly is. And Mariela and her tyrant uncle are ecstatic to see that
millions of Americans are -- finally -- cheering them on. At long last,
they’re on the same side.

Last week, Palestinian Authority Member of Parliament and Director of
the PLO Commission of Prisoners’ Affairs Issa Karake visited the
families of three of the terrorists who took part in the lynching and
murder of two Israeli reservists in 2000. Karake honored these murderers
by giving their families “plaques of honor.” [Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, May 9, 2015]

Karake has stated that Palestinians have an unequivocal right to “resistance” and “struggle” – PA euphemisms for violence against Israel. He calls the murderers of Israelis “heroes.”

On Oct. 12, 2000, a Palestinian mob brutally murdered and mutilated
the bodies of two Israeli reservists who had accidentally entered
Ramallah. A well-known picture from the gruesome murder showed a
Palestinian raising his bloodied hands heroically, showing the crowd his
hands covered in the blood of his victims. The bodies of the two
Israelis were thrown out of the window, and the mob dragged them through
the streets of Ramallah. (Photo credit: Agence France Presse)

The following is an excerpt of the official PA daily’s
report on MP Karake and the PLO’s glorification of the terrorists
involved in the Ramallah lynch and murders:

“Director of PLO Commission of Prisoners’ Affairs [and PA
Parliament Member] Issa Karake… [visited the] families of prisoners
sentenced to life, together with a delegation of the commission… The
visit began at the home of prisoner Muhammad Hashem Nawarah, 31 years
old, who has been imprisoned since 2001… Karake also visited the family
of prisoner Jawad Abu Qara, 42 years old,who has been imprisoned since
2001 and is now in Rimon prison. Abu Kara is married and has four sons,
who grew and came of age without him being able to raise them and show
them fatherly feelings because of the occupation. The visit ended at the
home of the family of prisoner Habes Bayyoud, 42 years old, who has
been imprisoned since 2002… Karake awarded plaques of honor to the
prisoners’ families.”

[Al-Hayat Al-Jadida, May 9, 2015]

Muhammad Nawarah, Habbes Bayyoud and Jawad Abu
Qara – serving prison sentences for participating in the Ramallah
lynching on Oct. 12, 2000, in which a Palestinian mob brutally murdered
two Israeli reserve soldiers, Vadim Nurzhitz and Yossi Avrahami, who had
accidentally entered Ramallah. Nawarah is serving one life sentence,
Bayyoud is serving two life sentences, and Abu Qara is serving 25 years.

He became famous for his ferocity and personal brutality as well as for his battlefield successes.

Zarqawi’s personal hatred for Shiites
remains an integral part of Islamic State ideology. He called them "a
sect of treachery and betrayal ... the lurking snake, the crafty and
malicious scorpion"

Zarqawi led his jihadis in many high profile terrorist attacks. Some
of the most brutal were an August 2003 attack on the UN compound in
Baghdad that killed 22, including UN Special Representative Sergio Vieira de Mello, then considered the most likely successor to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.

Relief
workers search through the rubble for survivors in the aftermath of the
2003 attack on the UN Office of Humanitarian Coordinator Building in
Baghdad, Iraq

In February 2004 the group killed 150 people in simultaneous attacks in Baghdad and the Shiite holy city of Karbala
during the holiest day of the Shiite year: the Ashura festival. Zarqawi
was also known for his ferocity, in a particular his preference for
carrying out beheadings personally.

Al-Qaeda in Iraq built up its own network of supporters and fighters
during the Iraq insurgency. Although it was technically subordinate to
Al-Qaeda central, in practice it did what it wanted.

It was in these early years in Iraq that Zaraqawi developed his ultraviolent brand of jihad that defines the Islamic State.

The founder of the group that became the Islamic State, Zarqawi’s
example is followed by the Islamic State today. He is quoted on the
first page of every issue of the Islamic State propaganda magazine Dabiq
and honored by them with the title Sheikh.

“The spark has been lit here in Iraq, and its heat will continue to intensify – by Allah’s permission – until it burns the crusader armies in Dābiq”